MovieChat Forums > Waitress (2007) Discussion > Adrienne Shelly's murderer sentenced to ...

Adrienne Shelly's murderer sentenced to 25 years

posted 17 years ago by billysoffhismeds
72 replies | jump to latest

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/02/14/actress.slain.ap/

Construction worker, Diego Pilco, admitted in court on Thursday that he was robbing Shelly when he killed her.

With Shelly's mother, brothers, other relatives and friends present, Pillco explained to the court how he killed her on November 1, 2006. His story differed considerably from the account he initially gave police.

The defendant first said he was renovating a third-floor apartment in Greenwich Village when Shelly came down and complained that he was making too much noise. Shelly used the apartment in that building as an office.

Pillco initially said she called him names, they fought and he killed her accidentally. He said he then hanged her with a bed sheet to make her death look like suicide.

On Thursday, Pillco admitted to the court that he was in fact robbing her when he killed her. He said he had eaten his lunch in the basement and was walking back up the stairs to resume working when he saw Shelly going up to her flat.

"When I saw her I decided to rob her," Pillco told the court.

[–] asfound 15 years ago

A real bunch of reactionary, over-simplifying death mongers here. Thank god the progress of civilisation is not dependent on the mob, or we'd still be in the dark ages. Capital punishment has no place in the 21st century.

[–] owenrcarpenter 15 years ago

On his 'Facebook' page, Diego Pillco has listed his favourite movie star as Sylvester Stallone. In 2002, Stallone made a rather average crime/horror movie called 'Eye See You', which is also sometimes known as 'D-Tox'.

In this movie, Stallone plays a cop who is hunting a serial killer. He is married to the beautiful Dina Meyer, and is worried that the stress of his job will damage his relationship with her. For the record, Dina Meyer played Dizzy in 'Starship Troopers'. She has firey red hair, very fair skin, deep blue eyes, full lips and rather high cheekbones. Dina is of average hight but seems small when compared to Stallone's bulk. When Stallone is at work he recieves a threatening phone call from the killer, The call is traced, and it is revealed that it originated from Stallone's own house. The killer is in his home.

When Stallone gets to the scene, he finds that his wife is dead in the living room. She has been hanged by her neck from a beam. She is also naked from the waist down.

The killer left no forensic traces behind him.

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] owenrcarpenter 15 years ago

I agree with Tompkinsj 100%.

This is not a man, but a monster. Adrienne was alive and conscious when he slipped that noose around her neck. She was strangled slowly by the weight of her own body. This should constitute death by torture in anyone's book. As far I know Pillco has no mental illness that could serve to mitigate the circumstances of this horrible crime. The defence didn't even bother to try for an insanity plea. This man has a healthy mind. He's not sick, he's simply evil. How do you define Diego Pillco? The answer is simple. He is what you would get if you rolled all the villains from 'The Toolbox Murders', 'Martin' and 'Copycat' into one and then turned the resulting creature loose on the streets of New York! I'm not being flippant here. This guy is monster, and he belongs on a movie screen rather than the real world.

However, since he IS in the real world, may I remind everyone of the last words of Boris Karloff's monster in the 1935 film 'Bride of Frankenstein'.

"We BELONG dead!"

Thank's Boris, I couldn't have put it better myself! The real world has no place for monsters!

PS: In reference to 'bad movies', even in original series of 'Star Trek' the Federation kept the death penalty on the books for certain offences. Check it out if you don't believe me. Yes, I confess. I am a sci-fi and fantasy nerd. A couple of years ago I would have added 'horror' to that list too. Today, not so much...

[–] George_Mason 15 years ago

"Is NY State so flush that they can spend the amount of money it will take to keep this animal alive? I know that California doesn't.

And where to you get this ". . . no place in the 21st century," a bad film?

You would prefer that the state keeps an animal like Diego alive at $ 200,000.00 per year, instead of eliminating him?"

The yearly cost of an inmate is $ 25.000, where the hell do you find the $ 200.000 ?

The average cost for a life sentence is $ 1.000.000 , while the cost for a death sentence is $ 2.000.000, as there are many extra costs when death penalty is at stake (longer trials, lots of experts summoned...), supposedly to prevent innocent being sentenced to death.

[–] Zero_70 15 years ago

It's so sick that he tried to make out the Adrienne had killed herself. It's almost as cruel as the actual murder. It would of been awful if the final verdict had been suicide. Thinking that your spouse commited suicide and wondering if there was something you did or didn't do that caused it is just so terrible.

He truly deserves life. As far as I can tell it was a calculated act of murder. Just because the intention was originaly to rob Adrienne, his sick plan to try and get away with it was just as bad and should be taken into account.

It makes me so sad to think of her :(

I was born on the wrong side of everything

[–] schoolqueen12 15 years ago

I didn't realize that she had died until today, when I saw that her birthday was today. I then saw that there was a year listed after her birthday date and I was confused since I recognized her. The movie Waitress was on last night and I really liked the movie especially her character Dawn. Dawn was very realistically portrayed and she was sweet. I clicked on Adrienne Shelly's page and realized that I had just seen her in the movie last night.

It shocked me to read that she was murdered almost four years ago. It was upsetting and horrible that somebody tried to pass it off as a suicide. What a cruel cruel man that guy is! He should've gotten life or the death penalty.......

RIP Adrienne Shelly. I'm so sorry you are not celebrating your birthday with us today.

[–] owenrcarpenter 15 years ago

This was not a robbery. Shelly was the victim of a pre-meditated and ritualistic murder. It is generally accepted that Adrienne was raped beforehand. The only reason that this case was written off a manslaughter during an opportunistic burglary was because the prosecution did not have enough evidence to make a case.

The plea-bargain agreed that Pillco plead guilty to manslaughter and accepted the maximum sentence of 25 years. It was believed at the time that he would not qualify for parole. However, it now appears than he can currently expect to have several years knocked off for 'good behaviour'.

The very least he deserves is Life W/O Parole!

[–] deem_bastille 11 years ago

thank god. I could have sworn she was killed in morningside heights near morningside park but she wasn't. that bit resonated with me because I was living like 6 blocks from the park at the time.

meanwhile, he was an illegal immigrant. why not just kill him??

and what loony kills someone because he is 'having a bad day'???

OH THANK YOU GOD! THANK YOU SO BLOODY MUCH!!! Basil Fawlty

[–] owenrcarpenter 11 years ago

To be quite honest I agree with Deem_Bastille in that this evil tosser should be put to death! There is no point in jailing him, there is no cure for someone like him and he should be removed from the skin of the Earth as soon as possible.

Now, to an American this statement may seem like small beer, but I'm English and in the European Union saying that in some circumstances the death penalty is justified is like a New Yorker saying that in some circumstances there is a case for crashing a passenger jet into a sky-scraper. The speaker will be thought to be either mad or making a joke in the worst possible taste. In the EU even Life w/o Parole is a violation of Human Rights. In some of the EU's member states the is no provision for ANY kind of Life sentence - and their maximum jail term is only 21 years! The fact that I am now pro-death penalty should make it clear how strongly I feel about Adrienne's murder.

Still, I don't see what Diego Pillco's failure to obtain a green card has to do with it. This man should be executed because he is irredeemably evil - not because his papers were not in order!

[–] crissttigaldames 10 years ago

Our great justice systems at work (not that other countries' are better... at least the USA's one is better thatn those of European countries).

BTW, the evidence cannot have been SO flimsy or the criminal wouldn’t have taken a plea bargain to begin with.

As for the plea bargain, if he changed his story later on to a much worse one, then shouldn’t that make the plea bargain not valid?

Modern law supports criminals WAY too much. Especially in countries like England. It's gotten to pathetic levels and I don't know how people put up with it.

I know people like to say “someone will be waiting for him when he gets out” to make themselves feel better. But the reality is, that won’t happen. Because decent people don’t do that. That’s why the friggin LAW is supposed to protect them. And because if they did then they’d go to prison themselves, and I bet that for longer tan this POS will.
People also like to console themselves thinking “some rough prisoner inside will make him pay” or something along those lines. Won’t happen either. The people who sexually abuse other prisoners in prison are exactly people like this bastard. Not the other way around.

The illegal immigrant thing, the thing is the left would want this people just allowed to stay, instead of deported.

[–] crissttigaldames 10 years ago

Most Americans beside the native Americans are illegal immigrants...

No, they're not. They were born in the US. DO you even know what illegal immigrant means?.

I think death penalty is murder

You need to do a better job of thinking then. Tell me, do you also consider a prison sentense to be kidnapping?. Do you notice the fault in your reasoning?.

I guess you also think life without parole is a violation of human rights. Because who cares about the human rights of the victims...

[–] Ithilfaen 9 years ago

You need to do a better job of thinking then.

Thinking is a job? 

Tell me, do you also consider a prison sentense to be kidnapping?

Putting someone in jail is enough to protect society from him/her. That should be all that society is entitled to do. Killing a human being, even a guilty one, is unnecessary and serves only vengeance purposes. As such, it is murder.

Murder: the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another

We don't get to keep our hands clean as a society because we don't pull the lever. Someone does. In our name. It's a cold calculated murder, which is even worse than the crime committed in most cases, since passion or emotion were involved.

For every lie I unlearn I learn something new - Ani Difranco

[–] owenrcarpenter 9 years ago

Ithilfaen, the key word here is UNLAWFUL. If a man has a warrant, whatever he does is legally sanctioned.

By the way, Ted Bundy was jailed twice - and twice escaped to go on further killing sprees!

[–] Ithilfaen 9 years ago

BTW, the evidence cannot have been SO flimsy or the criminal wouldn’t have taken a plea bargain to begin with.

That's what most people assume unfortunately. Obviously, if you think for a minute and try to put yourself in the shoes of someone accused of murder, you'll see it's very easy to get convinced by a plea bargain. That guy probably had some *beep* lawyer who went to an online law school, who had 20 other cases to take care of, and who never won a case in his life because he took plea bargains every time.

By the way, your "argument" could also be true of the prosecution. Why would they offer a plea if they had such a titanium case?

Because decent people don’t do that.

Right. All the decent folks in the thread who are saying he should have been killed...

Won’t happen either. The people who sexually abuse other prisoners in prison are exactly people like this bastard. Not the other way around.

 yeah cause now he's also a rapist. He tried to rob her, was caught, panicked and killed her. Let's not turn him into a serial killer or a mastermind criminal please. He definitely won't be a predator in jail, especially not in 20 years when he's old and in jail.

The illegal immigrant thing, the thing is the left would want this people just allowed to stay, instead of deported.

Besides being exciting to people like you because it gives them more reason to complain about "illegals" and "the left", the fact he was an immigrant, illegal or not, had nothing to do with his crime. Poverty probably did, as a motive for robbery but in the end it doesn't matter much why he killed.

For every lie I unlearn I learn something new - Ani Difranco

[–] owenrcarpenter 9 years ago

Sorry, Ithilfean. Both the police and the Shelly family are convinced that Pillco's primary motivation in stalking Adrienne Shelly was rape not robbery, and also that her death was pre-meditated. The NYPD see a lot of murders, even those that are faked as suicides. They cotton on these pretty quick with that kind of experience.

What they DON'T see are killings so subtle that even the pathologist writes it off as a suicide before the victim's family force a second forensic investigation. This was the act of a highly-organised sexual predator, not a bungling thief. I took the matter under advisement with a VERY senior CSI investigator back in 2008 and they were of the opinion that if the authorities were to check out Pillco's previous whereabouts "it would not be a waste of time."

For the record, Shelly's murder was a perfect reconstruction of the screen death of Dina Meyer in the 2002 Stallone thriller 'D-Tox'. Dina Meyer and Adrienne Shelly were so similar they could have been sisters. In Pillco's Facebook profile he says his favourite movie star is Sly Stallone.

Do the math!

[–] 9 years ago

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[–] OldFriendOfTheChristys 9 years ago

As much as I love the film, I can't watch it without feeling as if there's a dark cloud hovering over me. Such an indescribable tragedy. Not only did a daughter lose her mother, and a husband his wife, but the world lost a fine director-writer-actress who appeared to be on the cusp of superstardom.

[–] owenrcarpenter 9 years ago

I always thought it was as if George Lucas had been killed just before 'American Graffiti' had opened in theatres. In a few years, Ron Howard, Harrison Ford and Richard Dreyfus would have been huge stars - but Lucas himself would have been forgotten. Though only if he died in an accident, NOT if he had been murdered!

Nathan Fillion and Jeremy Sisto could write their own ticket after 'Waitress', and with 'Castle' and 'Law & Order' under their belt they now seem set for superstar status. Keri Russell is currently one of the biggest actresses in Hollywood with 'The Americans' and 'Planet Of The Apes' to her name, and Cheryl Hines isn't exactly starving either, directing Meg Ryan and Justin Long in 'Serious Moonlight'.

Where is Adrienne Shelly in Hollywood's pantheon?

I guess this is what happens when you have the bad luck to get murdered by a porn-addicted Latino without a Green Card in a manner lifted from the cheesy horror movies he obsessed over. The nut-jobs on the Left don't want this story publicised because it gives ammo to bigots like Donald Trump who blame America's problems on non-whites and immigrants, and the nut-jobs on the Right don't want this out there because it gives support to puritans like the 'progressive' Sisterhood of Dworkin, who blame all the ills of the world on Playboy and Hollywood Slashers.

Adrienne is an embarrassment to both sides, and so her death (and life) is quietly forgotten!

[–] Princess_Raptor 9 years ago

Excellent points sir. I believe people forget the word "illegal" when people have issues with this. There are laws in place that are supposed to be used to vet someone coming into our country. That is the issue I have with illegal immigrants. We have enough issues with criminals who are citizens.